


Candied Raspberries

by alekszova



Series: Sumo's [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Bakery and Coffee Shop, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Abuse, a fair amount of murder, strawberry cookies not necessary but recommended
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-13 22:42:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16901208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: North's recently moved from Seattle back to Detroit where she was born and raised. She satisfies her love for coffee at a cafe called Sumo's that Chloe works at.





	Candied Raspberries

**Author's Note:**

> “As long as there was coffee in the world, how bad could things be?  
> City of Ashes - Cassandra Clare

_February 1 st_

The boxes are crammed into the small space. Too many of them containing too little. Things wrapped carefully or boxes that have been hastily filled from having spent too much time trying to pack it neatly. North has been in this apartment for nearly two months and the only boxes that have been opened are the ones necessary: clothing and shoes and silverware and plates.

Her coffee maker is hidden somewhere in the wreckage. She doesn’t have the energy to try and find it. She never does. She wakes in the morning exhausted and half-dead and by the time she gets dressed, she sighs and finds her shoes to leave for the café down the street. Easier to buy than to locate it in her own place.

When she had initially left Seattle for Detroit, she hadn’t expected it to go like this. She made a mistake and she was running. She’s still running. She’s always running. She has never been able to stop for a breath since she was born.

And she left her friends behind. Simon and Markus and Josh. _Niles._

She even misses _Niles_ of all people.

And it is strange heading to _Sumo’s_ and seeing his face through the doors. Not quite right. Not quite there. The eyes are brown, the features are softened just slightly so. Her and Connor have seen each other before. They’ve met in the barest sense of the word. A short visit to see his twin never resulted in the two of them talking very much.

A wave. A hello. _Hi, I’m North._ And then it was over. Maybe if she was closer to Niles she would have put more effort forth. And she always wanted to be closer to Niles. Understand all the heartbreak and the happiness that Markus felt that he couldn’t quite have before.

The truth is, when North enters _Sumo’s_ all she gets is the crushing feeling of loneliness as she orders her coffee and sits down at one of the booths. Surrounded by people but completely alone. A fake version of her fake friend beyond a door.

She doesn’t know why she stays. She doesn’t know why she tortures herself.

Maybe it’s because she can’t find her coffee machine. Maybe it’s because even if she did, the coffee here is a thousand times better.

Maybe it’s that the barista is cute.

But she cannot be allowed to love. She’ll have to run again eventually. There is no point to it. There’s no point to any of it.

_But,_

The barista is _very_ cute.

Enough to sway her over to the side of reckless behavior.

 

_February 3 rd_

Chloe knows the girl’s order by heart. She knows most people’s orders by heart. They’re usually simple, consistent. There are some, like the annoying scarred up boy that tips well but changes his mind seemingly every time he shows up, like he’s testing her skill level. A mocha latte one day, a cappuccino the next, a plain black coffee that she watches him overload with sugar.

But others keep it the same.

This girl does.

When Chloe see’s her outside of the café, she is already prepared to make the coffee she always asks for.

_North._

That’s what she said her name was. It took Chloe seven times before she believed her. _North._ A strange name. It seems to follow her everywhere.

“Hazelnut?” Chloe asks, looking to her as she steps up to the counter.

She’s never seen the girl smile, but she does this time. A small thing. Her first thought is that it’s fake—Chloe has seen a thousand fake smiles just today. She wears her own the majority of the time. But there is something that tells her it might be a little real. Just a small percent.

“Yeah,” she says, and calling her by her name, calling her _North_ seems wrong. She doesn’t know her. It’s too intimate a thing to get into the habit of.

Chloe’s own name is on a silver tag on the front of her uniform. Carefully engraved and pinned to the front of a soft pink shirt. She’s sure that this stranger doesn’t think of her as _Chloe_ though. Just the barista on the other side of the counter making her coffee every day.

“Anything else?” she asks, but she already knows the answer there, too.

“Raspberry,” she says, leaving the end blank.

Anything raspberry.

Cookies or pie or cheesecake. Tarts and parfaits and trifles. Even the extremely rare bread that gets made. _Sumo’s_ might be branded as a café and bakery, but people come here for the sweets more than anything.

Chloe reaches downwards, taking one of the muffins from the tray and wrapping it up carefully, sliding it across the counter towards her.

“That everything?”

She watches her face for a second. There’s a small quirk to her lips and a slight shake of her head, but her response is different from her body language, “That’s it.”

For some reason, she expected something else. _Your number?_ maybe.

But nothing.

_For the best._

 

_February 6 th_

“Chloe?”

She blinks, realizing she has been off in space, thinking of something else. Something terrible. Something awful. She can never seem to keep her thoughts from straying, no matter how hard she tries.

“Yes?” she says, setting her mug down, looking between Hank and Connor, not sure which one said her name or how many times it was repeated.

“I’ll be gone tomorrow,” Hank says, with a tone that says he’s repeated it a hundred times. Almost worried.

Or, rather, absolutely worried.

In any another work place, it would probably be terrible for her boss to know so much about his employees. Their histories and their trauma. But Hank does, and he isn’t like the bosses she’s had in the past. _Sumo’s_ is a small close-knit place. More family than work.

And he certainly tries his best to be a friend.

And sometimes he is too helpful.

Hank continues talking and she forces herself to focus on his words. Repeating each individual one in her head to make sure she has it right, that it’s making sense. All of her responsibilities and duties and the things that will keep her from letting her mind wander too far.

She knows what his real fear is. If she has too much free time. If she has any at all.

She doesn’t blame him.

She worries, too.

 

_February 10 th_

North starts to find it impossible to sleep.

It’s too dark. The curtains she brought with her in the move do too good of a job blocking out the light. And it wasn’t a problem before. She needed the pitch-black darkness to suffocate her senses.

But that was before she made her mistakes. That was before she felt like everywhere she turned she saw a face in the dark looking back at her, taunting her, asking what she did, why she did it.

_She made a mistake._

She keeps making mistakes.

And it’s too dark to forget them. She needs the bright lights of the city to fill her room and comfort her with the lack of shadows and places to hide.

North stumbles out of the bed toward the windows, reaching towards the fabric and pulling down hard. She could just open them but she isn’t thinking properly she needs the light _now_. It’s too urgent of a need to put care into this. She needs to dispel the darkness as quickly as she can.

The metal rod bends before it finally gives way from the hooks, falling to the ground and clattering with the dark curtains. The light of the street below floods her room in a soft orange glow and she breathes in a deep sigh.

 _Peace._ Comforting light. A blanket of shimmering snow coating the streets outside.

It won’t stop the nightmares but at least she’ll be able to sleep, and that is all North wants right now. A few hours of rest.

 

_February 13 th_

She sits by her window, leaned against the cool glass with her phone pressed to her ear and listening to Markus ramble on and on about something romantic that Niles had done for him and how could he ever manage to do something in return that could show his love properly?

She doesn’t get it. How easy it is for Markus to pretend that everything is okay. That everything is fine.

Maybe it’s now that she’s gone. The problems concerning her don’t exist if she isn’t present.

 _Fuck._ She’s lonely. She’s isolated here. She has no one. And she doesn’t like it. She wishes Josh or Simon were here. They’d be able to wallow with her in their singleness and she could pretend that the two of them are equally bad at all this as she is.

And Josh wouldn’t pretend that everything is alright. He wouldn’t let her forget what she did. He wouldn’t let her ignore it or excuse it. It’s always his voice that is reminding her of her wrongs. And that doesn’t bother her—but it isn’t as if she doesn’t recognize it on her own, either.

_Always running._

Simon knew more of the details and she only trusted him instead of Josh because he would try his best to reassure her that everything is okay. _No harm done._ Just enough care to let her get through the day. A selfish act. One that she hasn’t forgiven herself for.

“Do you think he’d like that?”

“Yes,” she says, even though she hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m sure he’d love it.”

“You weren’t even listening.”

“Niles loves you,” she says, turning away from the window. She’s tired of looking at the snow piling up on the streets. Her coat isn’t warm enough for this weather. It never is. Every year comes and goes with freezing winters and she always promises she’ll get a new one and she never does because it’s never worth it. She remembers too late in the season to pay that much for something she’d only use for a few more weeks. “He’d like whatever you did.”

“He’s not a fan of surprise parties.”

“No,” she says, barely recalling anything that he said. “But that wasn’t your idea.”

_Was it?_

“I don’t know…”

She releases a tiny sigh. Too many thoughts piling up in her head. She loves Markus. She’s happy he is happy. She couldn’t be more thrilled with all of this. But she can’t handle this right now. The reminder that she is alone and Markus is there with the others.

“I have to go, the food I ordered is here.” North lies, standing up and walking towards the mountain of boxes. “Sorry, Markus.”

“Oh, well—”

“Bye.”

She hangs up because she doesn’t want to hear him say it back. She’s tired of it. She’s tired of hearing _good bye_ and _I miss you._ She wanted to stay. She couldn’t. End of.

No point in dwelling on unfixable things.

North turns her attention to the boxes, sitting down beside one and reaching for the pocket knife resting on another. She’ll put her thoughts into this instead of the past.

But she might leave the coffee machine hidden for a little while longer.

 

_February 14 th_

_Sumo’s_ is closed and she has never been more grateful in her entire life. Valentine’s Day is hard enough to get through without having to worry about customers, most of which will argue and complain when the strawberry cookies are sold out.

And today she is free.

Chloe wraps herself up in her coat. Soft white, a pink scarf wrapped around her neck, knitted gloves she bought on sale that she’s had for three years and are falling apart. There’s a hole in the space between her index finger and her thumb on one of the gloves and on the other the tip of the pinkie is missing. But she likes the nature of them. The history they contain. She knows when they first got snagged and the rip started to appear.

And, they really are too cute for her to get rid of. Cat faces on the back of the hands. Black details against pale yellow.

She stretches her hands out, surveying the dying gloves against her coat and the scarf. Both a little bit messy, falling apart the slightest bit. She has fixed the buttons on her coat a dozen times, has sewed the polyester-satin lining back down on three different occasions. Her scarf is the newest. Soft fabric, long enough to wrap around enough times she can hide her face when the cold wind is too much. It’s a Christmas present from Connor—he couldn’t quite figure out how to knit her one, but he found the scarf in the exact shade that matches the vinyl on the booths at _Sumo’s._

The apartment door closes behind her as she leaves, heading to the elevator before out into the cold. She fumbles with her headphones as she steps out onto the street, a soft song playing as she waits for the bus to come by.

Her eyes move to her phone screen, switching from one song to the next. She needs the perfect one. Something light and upbeat. Something that will help push away some of the thoughts in her head if she can imagine happy memories along with it.

But her gaze is caught half way there.

_North._

She’s standing a few feet away, bundled up just like Chloe is, but they are stark contrasts. North’s jacket is black and her scarf is a deep burgundy, laying loose around her neck. She has her own focus on her phone screen, tapping quickly across it before pocketing it with a small smile that looks almost like the one at the café a while back.

Real, then?

She hates that that is her biggest concern. Whether her smile to Chloe was real.

They can’t be anything. She ruined her possibility of having a good future with anyone three years ago. _Five years ago,_ she corrects. But five years ago she could call it a mistake. Bad judgment in the middle of the night.

Three years ago?

That was on purpose. That was planned.

But when their eyes meet, she can’t help but feel heat rise to her face and a blush cross her cheeks. She brings up a hand, suddenly feeling foolish and stupid for having ripped gloves as she gives her a wave.

It’s returned, and she feels her heart beat a little faster.

 

_February 15 th_

She sets down the coffee at the edge of the counter, the small plastic bag beside it already wrapped up with a handful of candied raspberries. North is already at the door at the same time she always is—a little after nine but not quite exact. Just when the café is a little bit dead, but not quite.

That stupid scar-face boy is here.

Chloe considers that maybe she plans it that way on purpose so she doesn’t have to wait. Maybe she just wakes up a little bit late in the day. Maybe she is just lucky.

“Good morning,” Chloe says, suddenly unable to look at her. “I—”

“My name is North,” she replies quickly, cutting her off. “I mean… you probably already know that. Sorry.”

“Yes,” she says, unable to stop herself from glancing up to North’s face. “You come in everyday.”

“Except Sundays.”

“Well—” Chloe lets out a nervous laugh. “Yes. Except for Sundays.”

“I didn’t realize we lived in the same building,” North continues. “I don’t… want you to think I’m stalking you.”

“No—”

“It’s my friend,” she says, and Chloe can hear a small bit of nerves in her voice. North doesn’t strike her as the type to be nervous, and she is. “He… he has a boyfriend. And his boyfriend told me about _Sumo’s._ His brother works here. I just mean that’s why I started coming here. Not because I was stalking you.”

“Connor?” she says, and North nods. “Oh. Did you want—”

“No, I don’t… I’m not close with him. We aren’t friends.”

But they could be. North and Connor could be friends.

“His brother lives in Seattle,” Chloe replies. “Did you just move here?”

“Yeah.”

_Oh._

And they live in the same building. _Small world._

But it doesn’t surprise Chloe that their paths haven’t crossed outside of _Sumo’s_ until now. She works early, she gets home fairly late because she never wants to come back to her apartment. She spends time wandering the streets and overlooking the river or finding a store to browse all the things she can’t bring herself to spend money on.

Sundays are the only day they could have really met.

Unless North is overlooking the river at eight o’clock thinking about terrible decisions in her past.

Maybe she is. How would Chloe know?

All she can assume is that it must be lonely, living in Detroit, but even then she could be wrong. North could have lived in Detroit her entire life until recently and is just moving back. She might have a ton of friends already here.

She knows nothing about her. Except her coffee order. Except her love for raspberries.

“My name is Chloe,” she says, and then offers the first real smile she’s had in a while that wasn’t from Connor or Hank saying something funny. “And I didn’t assume you were stalking me.”

But maybe she should have. Maybe she should have considered it to be a possibility.

Her past has gone unchecked for long enough. North could be some type of secret undercover detective trying to root out all the missing details in a few cold cases. Just because she knows Connor’s name doesn’t mean she’s who she says she is.

North pays and Chloe hands her back her change, resting each of the bills and coins in the register as she stares at the buttons, her thoughts wandering, finding somewhere else to rest for a little while.

She gives a glance to the door behind her where Connor is likely standing on the other side baking a cake or measuring out perfect quantities of flour. He would know the truth. If there is a North in Niles life. He might even recognize her if he saw her.

Not today. Not when her brain is consumed with pictures of blood or the sharpness of a knife or the feel of a gun.

 

_February 17 th_

It is probably a bad decision.

 _Of course_ it’s a bad decision.

But she comes back to _Sumo’s_ anyways. She stands on the opposite side of the counter. She makes small talk as Chloe works much slower than necessary to make her a coffee.

She takes it and feels a small smile tug at her lips.

 

_February 19 th_

It’s difficult talking to Connor. It’s always difficult talking to Connor. They are similar in aspects that makes her chest hurt and her brain fuzzy. She can’t quite hold onto life properly when he’s near. Chloe will always be there for him. She will always listen to him laugh and talk and complain.

But some nights, when she’s sitting on her couch and listening to him recount some of the things that has happened to him, it is hard to ignore how close they hit to home and it is difficult to lie to him.

Nearly impossible.

_Nearly._

But tonight is different. The two of them aren’t semi-drunk enough to spill all their fears of the fact they aren’t good enough anymore. That they’ve been ruined and hurt and now they are too damaged to be loved again.

She knows that’s Connor’s deepest fear. She knows it is by how many times she has heard it said. She knows it is by the times she has heard him talk about it and she has had to stop herself from saying _me too_ again and again.

If their worlds crumble and they are nothing but dust, at least they’ll have each other in the end.

Her best friend. Her confidant. She can tell him almost everything.

_Almost._

“Do you know a North?” she asks, the conversation already tipped in the direction of Niles. Connor visited him at Christmas, but not for long enough. It’s never a long enough trip. He won’t get to see him until Thanksgiving. She knows how harmful that can be.

She and her brother have been together for a long time. They have never been separated for more than a few weeks. She can’t imagine Daniel living on the other side of the country. Two thousand miles away.

Right where Simon is. She can hardly deal with him being gone—Daniel, too? She knows it’s selfish and wrong but she is grateful that out of the three of them she isn’t the one to be alone again. She has always felt like an outsider to their relationship. Triplets, but she doesn’t look like them. Blonde hair and blue eyes don’t make her one of the boys.

But that two thousand miles ruins her every time she’s reminded of it.

It’s too big of a space.

Thinking about it hurts.

“A North? No… wait,” he pauses and looks from her to the ceiling again. “Yes. I do. Why?”

It’s a little bit of a relief. More than she thought. She had been so quick to assume the worst. That North was going to find a way to get Chloe to admit all the terrible things she’s done. But she’s not a detective. She’s not a private investigator.

She’s just a girl that moved from Seattle.

“There’s a girl that’s been coming to the café,” she replies, her voice suddenly growing quiet. _A pretty girl._ The first girl she’s seen more than a fleeting look on the street that has made her face flush and her nerves unsteady. “She said she just moved her. Friends with a Markus that’s dating a Niles that’s got a twin brother named Connor working at a café.”

“Oh?”

“I think…” Chloe trails off and lets the words die on her lips.

 _I think she’s lonely._ And she does. North talks to her at the café, little by little. Sometimes she stays later than she used to and their conversations circle around generic topics. Favorite music and favorite movies and favorite colors.

“You think she’s pretty?”

She laughs, but she nods because that’s true, too.

“A little,” she says, but she keeps her gaze stuck on the couch instead of his face. “Maybe a lot.”

“You should ask her out then.”

Chloe laughs again, but instead of soft and bubbly it comes out harsher than she means, “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

Because three years ago she made a bad decision that will prevent her from ever having a good relationship. Because three years ago she made a bad decision that has started to destroy her from the inside out. She’s crumbling. She’s falling apart.

There is blood on her hands.

No matter what, that is a fact she cannot undo.

“I need time,” she lies. “I’m still…”

“I know.”

He _knows._

It’s terrifying how well he knows. How much he can pick up on that drop of truth.

And yet he doesn’t know anything at all.

 

_February 23 rd_

Chloe is a very dreamy girl. She sits in the chair behind the counter and when there aren’t any customers her eyes move to the ceiling and her head tilts as if she’s looking into the clouds. She’s somewhere else entirely, her face blank and unreadable but almost…

Wistful?

It’s not like North is watching her every chance she gets—sometimes she just glances up from her coffee or her phone and finds Chloe like that. As if she’s in another world.

It’s strange.

Because sometimes when it breaks, it seems like her brow furrows, her teeth close over her bottom lip, her hand shakes a little as she reaches for her phone as if she’s eager for a distraction.

No, North doesn’t watch her obsessively. It’s just a glance. Randomly. Every so often. Like she’s hoping for Chloe to be looking back.

And the truth is North _wants_ her to look back.

As ridiculous as it is. As much as she knows that a relationship between them couldn’t work. She wants Chloe to want it as much as she wishes she could have it.

 

_February 26 th_

North got her job at the fabric store a few weeks after she moved. Just after Christmas was over. A few days of training, a pair of scissors in her hands and now she’s stuck behind a table cutting large swaths of fake silk and stretch denim and fleece for various crafty people.

She doesn’t really get the appeal of making her own things. It seems too time consuming. Easier to spend the money on curtains that the store sells without having to waste her time finishing the edges and making bobbins of thread. She can barely even gather the time to go to the store and buy new unbent curtain rods.

Still. It is relaxing. Measuring out the exact yards, dragging the fabric over and sliding her scissors along the metal track to create a perfect line. She likes the look of fabric when it’s folded up, the tag attached to the top of the pile, slid across the counter as the next customer steps up with their bolt of red or blue or yellow. The capability of becoming absolutely anything.

But her thoughts wander. Consistently and annoyingly back again and again.

A girl with soft pink lips, silky blonde hair—

Falling and hitting the ground hard.

She can still hear the sounds of bones cracking.

_February 28 th_

The chatter of the people in the café is loud and obnoxious. People come up to the counter and order their coffees and pastries and the occasional tea and Chloe complies. It is her job, after all. She reaches below the counter towards the spot where the strawberry cookies would rest. The customer has asked for half a dozen, wrapped individually to go. Her hand reaches towards the tray, finding it empty.

 _Empty?_ She could have sworn there were some there before. She had just grabbed two for the last man who ordered some and the tray was still half-way full.

Chloe excuses herself with a small smile and an apology as she heads towards the kitchen, pushing the door open and letting it slide closed behind her to prevent the patrons from seeing the inside view.

It’s dark. She doesn’t realize that until she looks up from the floor and towards the center of the room where Connor is usually leaned against the granite looking through recipes or measuring out perfect placements for the cookie dough.

Her eyes move to the lights. On, but dim. One of them flickers, another one is missing a lightbulb.

“Connor?” she calls out. “Where are you?”

Silence, followed by her heart beating fast and her hands shaking. There is blood pooling around the corner of the counter. Just a tiny puddle she can barely make out but it’s unmistakable.

_No. No. No. No. No._

Her feet carry her forward, pulling around the side of the counter too quick for her mind to catch up to what it’s seeing. Red spilled across the floor, spreading closer and closer to her feet. She can’t let it touch her. She can’t let more blood get near her. She stumbles backwards, hitting the edge of the stove hard and her breath catching.

“Connor—”

“Why did you do it?” he asks, looking up from the body to her face. “Why’d you kill him?”

She feels herself sinking to her knees, legs unable to hold herself up anymore. She doesn’t want to kneel in this blood but she can’t support herself anymore. This is crushing her. This is destroying her.

“I had to,” she whispers, looking from Connor to the dead body. She doesn’t need to make out the face to know who it is. “I needed to do _something.”_

“To help me?”

Her jaw is trembling and she can feel her lungs constricting and tears pricking into her eyes, “Yes.”

And she will not be made to feel guilty because of it.

That man was a monster. He took Connor’s insides and he twisted them around his finger until it was wound so tight the threads snapped.

_She will not be made to feel guilty._

“He was the only one that ever loved me,” he whispers back. “You killed the only person that ever loved me.”

_No._

“That was not _love—_ ”

“Chloe?”

“He _hit_ you.”

“Chloe—”

“He tried to kill you first—”

“Chloe, wake up.”

 

She breathes in on heavy breath as her eyes open. She can still smell the scent of the blood in the air as she blinks around in the darkness trying to find the voice, trying to find anything to ground her in reality instead of the past.

“Daniel?”

“You were screaming.”

_Screaming._

“I-It’s just a bad dream,” she says. “That’s all.”

She has the urge to push him away, tell him that she’s fine. Everything is fine. _She has no reason to feel guilty about this._ But she can’t bring herself to actually make her brother leave her alone. She doesn’t want to be alone. She doesn’t want to be left by herself in the darkness with the image of Connor’s face still in her head. _Why’d you kill him?_

“Is it?”

“I’m okay, I promise.”

_Liar, liar, liar._

All she ever does is lie.

And she doesn’t need the light to be on to know what expression Daniel is making at her right now. Half lost and feeling useless and upset. Just like before, when they were kids. When the nightmares hit her, he was hopeless to do anything at all except trust her word. Simon was the one to comfort her. He was the one that had the softer side.

And he isn’t _here._

Which matters very little now. Even if he was here, he couldn’t help her.

“Are you sure?” he asks again.

“Daniel,” she says, reaching up gently to touch his shoulders, to push him back a little. She needs him gone now. She isn’t a little girl anymore. She can’t trust herself in this moment, either. If he presses, she might break. “I’m sure.”

He gives her a reluctant nod before disappearing from the room. Chloe waits five minutes before she stands slowly, creeping across the floorboards until she can reach the door and close it quietly. The lock clicks into place and it makes her cringe with how loud it sounds in the dark.

But now that she is by herself, she can let the façade break.

And she sinks to the floor and holds herself and closes her eyes tight enough that the tears will have trouble making their way down her cheeks.

_She has no reason to feel guilty about this._

But she still killed someone. There is still blood on her hands. She has still ruined herself beyond recognition.

**Author's Note:**

> [hmu on my tumblr](https://norchloe.tumblr.com/) if you want


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